Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and phylogenetics. Yet, realizing that life, as we know it on this planet, is just
a subset of all possible living systems may compromise the generality of these
principles. Thereby, these 'general' principles or 'laws' of systems biology may
not classify as 'laws' according to the definition of 'laws' in physics.
These types of issues are of great interest for the methodology and philosophy
of science in general, as biology is only one, but now the best elaborated example
of where 'generality' is limited to a large number of related specific cases. Given
that human beings can only engage in certain types of behaviors and chimps
in others but not all others, sociology struggles when trying to follow scientific
paradigms that aim for complete generality, as defined by physics. Here, this
topic may aid philosophers of science to venture onto new avenues.
And then there is the hyper-interface among philosophy, biology, theology,
and ethics. After all, the simplest form of life is the unicellular microorganism.
Even the complete understanding of how microorganisms function was once
thought to be far outside the scope of natural sciences. Therewith life itself
remained outside the domain of complete scientific explanation. This made
phenomenology-based biology, theology, the philosophy of being, and ethics,
autonomous domains of academic activity. With systems biology, life, first at
the simplest level of unicellular organisms, then at the level of all organisms
except primates, and perhaps ultimately at the level of intelligent human beings,
will become calculable. Herewith the domain of 'metaphysics' that relates to life
may be shrunken. The philosophy of what life is may be assisted by computer
models that enable them to calculate the behavior of living organisms. Either this
leads to a definition of life in terms of minimum behavior that is calculated by
those
in silico
replica of living organisms or a new definition of life is achieved,
which should then be much clearer than the present in terms of distinguishing it
from the one that could be calculated.
What life is has been discussed amply, in the context of systems biology, in
a number of chapters of this topic. What life is, is perhaps the main issue of
biology. Therewith, the philosophy of systems biology is really the philosophy
of biology, and this topic is the first that highlights this issue. It appears to
take the stance that limiting the philosophy of biology to that of the theory of
evolution is beside the key issue. The essence of biology is life and not just the
way it came about, notwithstanding the importance of evolution for the specific
forms that life on this planet has assumed.
In all these respects, this topic may spark a reappraisal of the role philosophy
can play in biology in general and in systems biology in particular. Although the
topic's title refers to the philosophical foundations of systems biology, it is much
more than that. It provides biology, biochemistry, biophysics, and in fact much of
the life sciences with methodological underpinnings. After all, systems biology
is not just a subdiscipline of biology; it constitutes much of what twentieth
century life sciences are developing into.
